Two talented Dartmouth alumni with a unique grasp of color and design are currently displaying their works as part of thePerspectives on Design Show at the Jaffe-Friede and Strauss Galleries in the Hopkins Center.
This year's winners of the Perspectives on Design Contest are Deborah Vogel '94 and Michael Houston '94. The show includes both artists' paintings as well as some prints by Houston as well as drawings and photographs by Vogel.
Both painters work in the abstract expressionist style.
Houston's paintings reveal an intense and dynamic usage of color to promote texture and depth. The heavy layering of paint and the intensity and energetic brush strokes in the paintings reveal an imaginative artist with a definite outlook on interactions between human and non-humans in certain environments.
The colors are bold and bright, such as greens, yellows, oranges, and reds, with black heavy lines that at times accentuate complex movements of objects and people in time and space.
Some of the paintings and prints express a certain comical outlook on life. They seem to reveal a cynical but innovative outlook on the daily routines in our lives.
Houston expresses a rather raw intuition in his subject matter, a source for both colorful and energetic dimensions.
Houston's works appeal to human emotions and the hypercritical sense of social constraint that gives way to strong and powerful works of art.
Vogel's works are a contrast to Houston's display of colorful pieces. Her paintings were done in response to last year's suicide of Kurt Cobain, a member of the band Nirvana.
There is a certain softness to the paintings that is achieved by the use of both cool and warm colors, such as grays and pinks that seem paradoxical to the subject with which she deals.
Vogel's works range from large to small pieces. A display of small pieces includes oil paintings, charcoal and pencil representations, as well as photographs and photocopies that seem to suggest themselves as perhaps significant reference points for further larger works. There is an incessant repetitiveness of the words "for" and "love" that Vogel uses throughout many of her pieces.
Vogel displays a strong grasp of color, in contrasting lights and darks, and in the sudden subtle manner of chilling the observer, such as in the painting "Untitled" that reveals a bright red color dripped from the canvas' upper region.
Vogel is an intuitive artist whose works reveal a progression of emotional strength throughout the paintings. They are unique and intriguing pieces of art that are both appealing but unsettling.